Drought bakes China’s wheat belt, slashing harvests for someAbout an hour by road northwest of the famed Terracotta Warriors, combine harvesters send out clouds of dust as they work their way through the parched wheat fields of Maqiao village in China’s northwestern Shaanxi province. “I’ve been growing wheat for over 20 years, and I’ve never seen a drought this bad,” said Zhou, 50, during a late May visit. Parts of China’s wheat belt in Shaanxi and Henan provinces have been hit hard by hot, dry weather, with the sun baking the soil into cracked slabs and scorching the wheat before it could ripen. In some parts of the province, the drought was so bad farmers brought the harvest forward by a week. As of May 30, about 60% of the wheat crop in Henan and more than 20% in Shaanxi had been harvested, according to state news agency Xinhua.
